Chikungunya virus non-structural protein nsP3 interacts with Aedes aegypti DEAD-box helicase RM62F

Ramesh Kumar; Priyanshu Srivastava; Kalika Mathur; Jatin Shrinet; Sunil Kumar Dubey; Mahendran Chinnappan; Inderjeet Kaur; Debasis Nayak; Soma Chattopadhyay; Raj K Bhatnagar; Sujatha Sunil

doi:10.1007/s13337-021-00734-y

Chikungunya virus non-structural protein nsP3 interacts with Aedes aegypti DEAD-box helicase RM62F

Virusdisease. 2021 Dec;32(4):657-665. doi: 10.1007/s13337-021-00734-y. Epub 2021 Aug 7.

Authors

Ramesh Kumar^#^{1

2}, Priyanshu Srivastava^#¹, Kalika Mathur¹, Jatin Shrinet^{1

3}, Sunil Kumar Dubey^{1

4}, Mahendran Chinnappan^{5

6}, Inderjeet Kaur^{7

8}, Debasis Nayak², Soma Chattopadhyay⁹, Raj K Bhatnagar⁵, Sujatha Sunil¹

Affiliations

¹ Vector Borne Diseases Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India.
² Discipline of Biosciences and Biomedical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore, India.
³ Present Address: Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL USA.
⁴ Present Address: Columbia University Medical Center, Columbia University, New York, NY USA.
⁵ Insect Resistance Group, International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India.
⁶ Present Address: Department of Internal Medicine, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, USA.
⁷ Malaria Research Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India.
⁸ Present Address: Department of Biotechnology, Central University of Haryana, Jant, Haryana India.
⁹ Infectious Disease Biology, Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar, Odisha India.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

The non-structural proteins (nsPs) of the chikungunya virus (CHIKV) form the virus's replication complex. They are known to participate in several functions that allow efficient replication of the virus in diverse host systems. One such function is evading the host defense system such as RNA interference (RNAi). Two nsPs of CHIKV, namely, nsP2 and nsP3, were found to suppress the host/vector RNAi machinery and exhibit RNAi suppressor activity. The present study was undertaken to identify interacting partners of CHIKV-nsP3 in Aedes aegypti. We performed pull-down assays with the mass spectrometry approach and showed the interaction of CHIKV-nsP3 with several Aedes proteins. Further co-immunoprecipitation assays revealed that CHIKV-nsP3 interacts with RM62F, a DEAD-box containing RNA known to play roles in multiple gene regulatory processes such as alternative splicing, RNA release, and also is a component of Ago2-RISC complex.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13337-021-00734-y.

Keywords: Aedes aegypti; Arboviruses; Chikungunya virus; RNA interference; nsP3.